Do 5-minute crafts baking hacks work? Debunking 5-minute crafts fake hacks

 

I love 5 minute crafts, but I sometimes wonder how many of their hacks actually work. Sometimes the hacks look like they might work, but others are totally crazy and not reliable. Whether they look like they’ll work or not, all of their hacks MUST be tested. That’s why I decided to test some of their hacks.

Specifically, I’m going to be looking at some of 5-minute craft’s baking hacks. If you would like to watch the video where I got these hacks, here it is:

If you would like to watch the video version of this blog, watch this:

 Out of this video, I got three baking hacks that I wanted to try. Two of them are chocolate hacks, the other is a seemingly genius way to cut parchment paper so that it fits perfectly in a round pan.

Hack #1 Chocolate mint leaves

5-minute crafts makes every hack look easy, especially this one. Although it may look easy, I’m going to test and see if it actually is. 

This hack, like I said before, is quite simple-looking. You just smooth melted chocolate on washed mint leaves and let them set in the fridge on parchment paper. Then you just peel the mint leaf off of the chocolate. 

Step 1: Prepare

I grabbed the mint leaves and washed them. Then I tore off some parchment paper and put the leaves on it. Then I melted the chocolate. ✅ Boring Step 1 is finished.

Step 2: The fun part

Now the fun part! I used a spoon to thickly spread the chocolate on each leaf. The hard part about this is my finger kept touching the chocolate because I had to constantly move it and mint leaves aren’t huge. Anyways, I finished adding the chocolate to the leaves and let them set in the fridge until the chocolate had set. I took them out and peeled off the mint leaves. I was actually surprised by how well the mint leaves came off. I was expecting them to rip and stick to the chocolate. A few did, but most of them peeled off like stickers. 👍 That was fun, except for the fact that they started melting again as soon as I started to peel them off.

In their video, 5-minute crafts puts the leaves on a cupcake and the leaves don’t melt. So what am I missing? Are they supposed to be in the fridge longer, and if so, how long? The chocolate on the leaves was completely hard, until it came out of the fridge. Maybe next time I shouldn’t put it in the fridge, but just let it sit out in a cool place.

As for the hack, it worked, but not very well. They definitely need to change the process so the chocolate mint leaves don’t melt. I give it a 5/10 because it worked only halfway well. 5-minute crafts needs to show these important details so we know the correct way to do it. These leaves are supposed to be used for decoration, but it’s hard to if they melt so quickly. Also, if you’re wondering, these chocolate leaves did have a hint of mint. 

Me                                   VS.              5-minute crafts

 

Hack #2 Parchment paper circle hack/Parchment paper cake pan hack

This hack is a little more complicated. Basically, you take a big piece of parchment paper, fold it a couple of times, put the tips of the triangle shaped parchment paper into the middle of the circular pan and cut it at the edge of the pan. Confusing, right? Well, I folded the parchment like they instructed, put the point of it in the middle of the pan and cut. I had to look back constantly at the video to make sure I was doing it right. As I was doing this, I was wondering “How do they think up this stuff?”. 

Anyways, I eventually made the last fold and cut, and I actually came up with a perfect circle that fit in the bottom of my circular pan. I was actually impressed. I give this hack a big thumbs up 👍. It’s a great hack that works, just like it’s supposed to. The only problem I have is that I’d have to either (a) look up the video every time I bake a cake in a circular pan, or (b) memorize all the folding and cutting steps. But still, a hack is a hack if it works. 

Now it’s time for the last hack I’m going to test.

Hack #3 Chocolate Butterfly

I was quite sure this hack was going to work - until it didn’t. I tore out some parchment paper, melted some chocolate and poured it into a piping bag with a fine tip. I put a book and then a butterfly stencil-picture under the parchment paper and started piping a beautiful, chocolate butterfly. When I was done piping the hot, melted chocolate onto the parchment paper, I slid two identical bowls under each side of the book and waited.

  The chocolate had finally set, so I lifted the parchment paper up with the butterfly. Then slowly, very slowly, I tried to peel the chocolate off of the parchment paper. It was working and then…  it snapped. The chocolate butterfly had just lost half a wing. I kept trying to peel the chocolate off, but it ended up just breaking into a bunch of pieces. 

Ok. So that hack didn’t work… for me, at least. My guess is that the chocolate was just too thin in spots that it broke easy. It also did peel off the parchment paper as easy as I thought it would. So, what do I give this hack? 🤏 I’ll give it a little bit of credit because I think part of it was the chocolate was thin in a spot or two. The problem with that though is that there are little lines in the butterfly that are of course going to be thin, so how do you get it off of the parchment paper without it breaking? I tried peeling it off slow, but it didn’t work. I feel like this hack could work, but I think we’re missing something vital that completes this hack. 

So overall the chocolate hacks were okay. The parchment paper hack was great, and I encourage 5-minute crafts to keep making creative ideas like these. I just wish they’d add a little more detail and a few tips so that we don’t have to figure out what we’re missing. 

As always, I hope you enjoyed this blog and were inspired. Remember, be creative! See you next time.